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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28522371">Drifting</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/redcursive/pseuds/redcursive'>redcursive</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>GhostInnit [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Dream SMP - Fandom</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Exile, Gen, Suicide, set after Tommy moves in with Techno</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-01-03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 20:34:39</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Major Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,211</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28522371</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/redcursive/pseuds/redcursive</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Tommy revisits the ruins of Logstedshire. It's fine, because he's better now.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>TommyInnit &amp; Technoblade</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>GhostInnit [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/2089377</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>7</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>242</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Drifting</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>the mods of my discord server had to make an entire new channel just for all the angst that people made. is it really a surprise that i got in on the action?</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>Tommy wakes, as usual, under several feet of water. It seems he's drifted away again, walking in the direction he knows will take him to L'Manberg. He kicks off of the ocean floor, barely making it to the surface before he drowns for good. It should probably bother him more than it does that his unconscious self keeps trying to kill him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He's gotten better. All his sorrow, his loneliness, his desperate pleads of “</span>
  <em>
    <span>why me?” </span>
  </em>
  <span>have turned into anger which simmers and bubbles like the lava he's grown fond of. Technoblade is fanning the flames of his anger, poisoning his mind against the government, Tommy knows. He knows he's being manipulated into hating his once best friend, that he's not actually going to get his discs back. Still, he sticks around because Techno's nice to him sometimes, and staying in that cabin gives Tommy the motivation to get out of bed.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>As he crawls onto the sandy shore, he wonders why he came here, to the smoldering ruins of Logsted. He'd wanted to see it again, for some reason which evades him now. Looking at the craters that used to be his home, he feels nothing but contempt.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>(That's a lie. He feels so many things and he doesn't even have a name for most of them. His emotions have names like </span>
  <em>
    <span>I-hallucinated-Tubbo-over-there</span>
  </em>
  <span> and </span>
  <em>
    <span>my-chest-hurts-when-I-think-about-Dream.</span>
  </em>
  <span>)</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He could have been president. He didn't have to pass the job off to someone else. None of this would have happened. What would that future have looked like? Would George's house still have burned? Would Dream--</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Never mind.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Tommy places obsidian into the broken portal frame. He remembers the horror he felt when Dream broke it. If Dream sees this portal active again, he'll be so mad. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Tommy lights the portal.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The vast expanse of the Nether stretches out before him. His ugly, rickety bridge, the product of his mania, is home to a few mobs. Two piglins toss items to each other, squealing when a zombie pigman gets too close. A magma cube hops around idly. Tommy wonders if it'll attack him. The magma cube hops right off the side of the bridge, plummeting down into the lava ocean below.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Me too, buddy," he mutters.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Tommy decides to visit his old screaming station. What a lot of good it did-- he never even raised his voice above a whisper the entire time he was there.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The flammable logs are warm beneath his hands as he sits down on the edge of the station. How many blocks of nothing but air are between him and the hissing, spitting lava? Fifty? A hundred? His hands clutch the log tighter.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>This place makes Tommy feel so inconsequential. If he fell, no one would ever find his body. No one would even know where he died or how, not unless he left a note. Of course, that would be a </span>
  <em>
    <span>suicide</span>
  </em>
  <span> note, and Tommy's better now. After all, look at everything he's managed to do so far! He made it all the way to Technoblade's base with nothing, broke into L'Manberg multiple times-- hell, he stared down Dream and told him no, he wouldn't go, he was staying with Techno! The Tommy who lived in Logsted before it blew up wouldn't have been able to do that. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He's better now.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Still... if he jumped-- fell, that is, how long would it take for someone to notice? Who would notice first? Maybe it would be Technoblade, wondering where his annoying business partner/tool went. Would it be Dream, filled with anger that he doesn't get to have the satisfaction of taking Tommy's last life for himself? It might be Ranboo, perhaps, come to play a little game with Tommy under the nose of his president.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They all ignored him when he said he didn't have much time left. He could show them all, it would be so easy... All he has to do is slip; slip into that Aegean magma sea.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He's not Theseus, he realizes. Technoblade was wrong. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The discs aren't the cause of the suffering that follows his every step like a dark cloud. Wherever he goes, whoever he meets, misery follows suit. It's not the discs; it's him. Tommy is not Theseus; he is Ajax. Just as Ajax unwittingly slew his own people in his selfish rage, Tommy has ruined people's lives in his hedonistic pursuit of his discs, and everything he's done so far to try to clean up his own mess has only created a bigger one. All he ever does is dig the hole deeper. He's dug so deep that he's hit bedrock, and he's one wrong move from breaking that, too, and falling into the all-encompassing void.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He doesn't want to die. He's gotten better.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The Nether is infinite. So is the Overworld, of course, but here, in this heat-haze foreign land, he gazes into the fog and knows there is nothing gazing back. He is alone. </span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>He is so fucking alone. </span>
  </em>
</p><p><span>No one knows and no one cares. They’ll</span> <span>probably rejoice once he's dead if they even notice.</span></p><p>
  <span>They won't, not for a while. How long will he be dead before anyone, any</span>
  <em>
    <span>thing</span>
  </em>
  <span> finds some proof of his absence? Will it be a strider, nudging his corpse along the surface of the blazing ocean like a morbid beach ball? Will a stray magma cube nibble on his stiff rigor mortis fingers? Will a wither skeleton find his bones on some crumbly shore and puzzle at why these charred bones don't carry a sword like itself?</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>"I am here!"</span>
  </em>
  <span> he screams into the lava far below, just for something to say. </span>
  <em>
    <span>"I exist!"</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>He can't breathe. He's drowning again, reliving every Logsted morning of waking up with water in his lungs. The dry heat of the churning molten rock far below him evaporates the water in his lungs, replacing it with resolve.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Tommy is not Theseus; he is Ajax. He will go out in a blaze of glory, even if no one is there to witness it but himself.</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>&lt;TommyInnit&gt; goodbye</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>He tosses the communicator into the lava, watching it blink out of existence, swallowed by flames which look so small from up high. His fingers slacken their grip on the log he's sitting on. He scoots forward, inch by agonizing inch.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Steeling himself, he takes the leap.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Stomach swooping in the throes of gravity, Tommy screams as he falls, exclaiming to the world that he is afraid and he has no regrets. The lava hits him all at once and oh, it is </span>
  <em>
    <span>agony</span>
  </em>
  <span>. He treads the thick, boiling not-fluid and tries his best to dunk his head under, to submerge himself completely. Shudders wrack his ruined body as he wails. Finally, </span>
  <em>
    <span>finally</span>
  </em>
  <span>, he sinks all the way underneath. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He can't get out now, not even if he wanted to. Lava fills his lungs, scorches alveoli and warms the spot in his chest that's been cold ever since he realized that perhaps Wilbur isn't in the right, perhaps Tommy is one of the bad guys after all.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Tears never form in his eyes, all water licked away by liquid agony. He wishes he could hold his brother's hand. He's scared.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He's better now.</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>&lt;TommyInnit tried to swim in lava&gt;</span>
  </em>
</p>
  </div></div>
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